Cuba hopes to complete the necessary doses of its most advanced vaccine candidates in August to immunize the entire population against COVID-19.
Author: Ronald Suárez Rivas | ronald@granma.cu
May 10, 2021
Cuba expects to complete the necessary doses of its most advanced vaccine candidates in August to immunize the entire population against COVID-19. This was announced by Doctor of Science Eduardo Martínez Díaz, president of the BioCubaFarma group.
He explained that the island could be the first country to immunize its entire population with its own vaccine. Both Abdala and Soberana 02 have their production systems, he said. “It was designed like this so that they would not compete, to be able to manufacture many vaccines in a short period of time,” Martínez Díaz recently explained in the Roundtable program.
The President of BioCubaFarma affirmed that, during the last weeks, the processes of scaling up the production of both vaccines have been carried out and that at the moment they are already obtained at an industrial level. In the case of Abdala, he specified that the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB) participates in its production system, where the antigen is manufactured, and then it is formulated at the Aica Laboratories.
Meanwhile, in Soberana 02 the Molecular Immunology Center participates, which manufactures the RBD antigen; the Finlay Institute, which conjugates this antigen with tetanus toxoid, and the final vaccine, the formulation of this conjugated antigen, is carried out at the National Center for Biopreparations (Biocen).
BioCubaFarma has designed an operations plan until December, which defines the number of doses that will come out month by month of each of the vaccines, which will increase over time.
“We are increasingly reaching industrial stability, we have lots of vaccines manufactured to begin the health intervention, which passed a rigorous evaluation process,” said Martínez Díaz, who highlighted that Cuba has more than 30 years of experience in development and vaccine production, which have been used in more than 30 countries.
